my past life

my past life, originally uploaded by Stevo28andgrowing.

A couple nights ago I was in a particularly weird mood with my camera. I tried a bunch of stuff, some of which can be found on my flickr page (Iinked to the right), but this picture got me thinkin about my pre-cubicle life. I played percussion in a band for years in a band and had a blast doing it. Looking back, there was never much of a chance for b-side to "make it", although (in my mind) we were pretty good, won some accolades such as getting to represent Arkansas bands at SXSW a few years ago. And we basically rocked peoples faces off with energy...that was probably the fun part about playing congas in a band like that, because if I messed up from jumping around people wouldn't even know that I'd messed up. It was a blast driving around with the guys in b-side and playing in new places. Places like Stillwater, OK where we spent more money getting there than what we made at that bar ($75 or so...yikes), or the W.I.L.D. festival at G. Washington U. in St. Louis where we opened up for hard rock bands (Saliva, Crazy Town and 311)...talk about a mismatch of sounds as we're playing titles like "Laugh Out Loud" and "Beautiful World". ha. there are a ton of good memories...and some that were bad at the time, but are now completely laughable.

If you want to check out some of the "old me" you can hear some b-side tunes at http://www.myspace.com/bsideark

I'm pretty excited because I'll get to hang with the old band guys in Nashville in 2 weeks. Zach and the guys are recording some new music and I'm just going to hang out. It'll be fun to rehash old times and be goofy. I'm also hopeful that I'll bump into my blog world buddy Aaron Ivey (http://www.aaronivey.com)

Beyond all of the memories this pic sort of churned up it also helps to ground me a bit, because my head sort of feels like I look in this picture. Driving to work today I felt like I should drive there in silence, take in the scenery and just listen for God. I didn't really hear anything, and I think it's because even in silence, my head was filled with a bunch of noise. How do we get beyond just turning off the tangible audio in our lives and get to being able to filter out that inner noise that just seems so much louder when you're trying not to hear it???